(Reuters) – Instacart said on Thursday cloud-based data warehouse firm Snowflake’s chief executive officer, Frank Slootman, has joined the board of the U.S. grocery delivery company that is preparing to go public this year.
Slootman, a software industry veteran who has been behind some big market debuts, was instrumental in taking Snowflake public in a mega initial public offering last year.
He has also led the IPOs of ServiceNow and Data Domain, and oversaw the eventual acquisition of Data Domain by EMC for more than $2 billion.
Instacart is considering going public through a direct listing, Reuters reported earlier this month. It has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc to lead its upcoming IPO, Reuters reported in November.
The company raised $265 million in its latest round of funding, more than doubling its valuation to $39 billion in less than six months.
The company has seen a boom in demand for delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic and has been expanding its business to non-grocery goods, serving customers of major stores such as Walmart Inc, beauty product retailer Sephora and convenience store 7-Eleven.
(Reporting by Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
